Kulturgeschichte

in Kluchert, Gerhard; Horn, Klaus-Peter; Groppe, Carola (Eds.) et al Historische Bildungsforschung. Konzepte, Methoden, Forschungsfelder (in press)

The Unblinking Eye: Labour Sciences and the Mechanical Registration of the Human Body

in Smeyers, Paul; Depaepe, Marc (Eds.) (Re)Presentation, Dissemination and Reception: Purposes, Processes and Practices of Educational Research (in press)

Shifting Epistemologies for Discipline and Rigour in Educational Research: Challenges and Opportunities from Digital Humanities

in European Educational Research Journal (2019)

This paper historicizes “rigour”, discipline” and “systematic” as inventions of a certain rational spirit of Enlightenment that was radicalized during the 19th century. These terms acquired temporary ... [more ▼]

This paper historicizes “rigour”, discipline” and “systematic” as inventions of a certain rational spirit of Enlightenment that was radicalized during the 19th century. These terms acquired temporary value in a transition during the 19th century when a culture of research was established within a modern episteme. Beginning in the 20th century, this development was perceived as problematic, triggering criticism from philosophy and the arts, and even within the sciences. “Discipline”, “rigour” and “systematic” have changed meanings over time, and recent contributions from Digital Humanities are promising for a renewed critical debate about rigour in research. Both digital humanities and quantitative research deal with big data sets aimed at providing a large-scale analysis. However, unlike most quantitative research, digital humanities explore uncertainties as their main focus. Attention to the human-machine collaboration has led to more expansive thinking in scientific research. Digital humanities go further by advancing a metaperspective that deals with the material hermeneutics of data accumulation itself. [less ▲]

Images of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as a Liminal Space for Educating a Workers’ Elite in 1920s Luxembourg

in History of Education (2019)

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper ... [more ▼]

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper draws on a collection of 2,251 glass plate negatives (re)presenting ARBED’s industrial cosmos, including its vocational school the Institut Emile Metz. The roughly 160 images of apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and a variety of activities in different contexts. The images’ contents testify to the institute’s programmatic hybridity and the constant (re-)mix of formal and semi-formal learning activities intended to educate natural, urban, mobile and communal men and future workers. Our focus is on Boy Scouts activities in a variety of different environments, which have functioned as a liminal space for educating a workers’ elite, mitigating the risks of industrialization and fostering social harmony and cultural belonging. [less ▲]

Introduction

in Priem, Karin; Herman, Frederik (Eds.) Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies and Minds in the Age of Steel (2019)

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies and Minds in the Age of Steel

Book published by Brill (2019)

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies, and Minds in the Age of Steel, edited by Karin Priem and Frederik Herman, offers new interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives on the history of ... [more ▼]

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies, and Minds in the Age of Steel, edited by Karin Priem and Frederik Herman, offers new interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives on the history of industrialization and societal transformation in early-twentieth-century Luxembourg. The individual chapters focus on how industrialists addressed a large array of challenges related to industrialization, borrowing and mixing ideas originating in domains such as corporate identity formation, mediatization, scientification, technological innovation, mechanization, capitalism, mass production, medicalization, educationalization, artistic production, and social utopia, while competing with other interest groups who pursued their own goals. The book looks at different focus areas of modernity, and analyzes how humans created, mediated, and interacted with the technospheres of modern societies. [less ▲]

L'album de David Seymour sur la lutte contre l'analphabétisme en Calabre en tant qu'outil de médiatisation : traces matérielles de la rédaction et de la narration

in Hendel, Giovanna; Naggar, Carole; Priem, Karin (Eds.) They Did not Stop at Eboli: The UNESCO Campaign Against Illiteracy in Reportages by David Seymour and Carlo Levi (1950) (2019)

An Interactive and Active Collective: Media as Relational and Entangled Objects

Scientific Conference (2018)

This paper draws upon different media, their contents, close relationships to lived life, and the memories and stories evolving around them. Challenging linear historical time, the paper looks at the ... [more ▼]

This paper draws upon different media, their contents, close relationships to lived life, and the memories and stories evolving around them. Challenging linear historical time, the paper looks at the interconnectedness of different media and how these connections and constellations shape histories. The different media analysed in this paper are perceived as an interactive and active collective of “ongoing moments” (Dyer 2007) and nodes that reinforce each other and relate to different audiences (e.g., Edwards 2009). As both performances of the past and living objects triggering memories and the making of histories, our source materials cover approximately seventy years and refer to a broad array of actors, experiences, relationships, places, and spaces within the wider context of the work of the Swiss Magnum photographer Werner Bischof who was commissioned by Schweizer Spende to travel war-ravaged Europe after the Second World War. More particularly, the paper concentrates on how a photographic portrait of a Dutch boy, Jo Corbey, taken in the town of Roermond in 1945, came to life, why and how it was made, and how it circulated and got entangled with other media in a meshwork of meaning making (e.g., Ingold 2015). Materials and sources discussed include Bischof’s diary entries, drawings, and contact sheets, the May 1946 issue of the Swiss monthly Du dedicated to Schweizer Spende, family photographs and newspaper clippings, as well as a 2010 photography exhibition (plus catalogue) in Helmond, Holland, and a 2011 interview with Corbey’s twin brother and sisters, which was recorded by Marco Bischof, co-presenter of this paper. Thematically, we will focus on the story of Corbey’s identification and the different stories that evolved around his life, and discuss the involvement of different actors as a collective or inter-relational conglomerate of media and humans who added their own stories, rationales, and memories. The image appeared in different print formats, was shown in exhibitions, and inspired TV shows and films while at the same time initiating debates on children and war, promoting humanitarian action, triggering memories of the past, and helping to break silences on war experiences. In sum, the paper will demonstrate how media travel back and forth between the margins and the center of history by virtue of their relational qualities as social objects. [less ▲]

The image of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as Liminal Learning Space (Luxembourg, 1920s)

Scientific Conference (2018)

While there is a large body of research on corporate photography, little has been written about the visualisation of young workers. This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely ... [more ▼]

While there is a large body of research on corporate photography, little has been written about the visualisation of young workers. This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel-manufacturing conglomerate ARBED, and analyses how these young workers were visualised. The paper draws on a collection of approximately 2,250 glass plate negatives of ARBED’s industrial cosmos, originally stored at the company’s vocational school, the Institut Emile Metz, and now archived at Luxembourg’s Centre national de l’audivisuel (CNA). The roughly 160 images of young apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and activities in various contexts and environments – in the classroom, the school yard, and the gym; in workshops and the institute’s psychophysiological laboratory; at the Belgian coast, in Luxembourg’s forests, and in urban spaces like London. A selected number of images were published in promotional brochures, showcasing these places, spaces, and activities and their different levels of “cultured” and “natural” properties. Thematically, the paper concentrates on (1) corporate photography as a means of identity formation by depicting apprentices in various places and spaces; (2) the creation of workers as cultured men and ideally educated workers through a diversity of recreational activities; and, most importantly, (3) the question of how leisure activities served as liminal spaces to stabilise the work sphere and how social and cultural belonging was visually forged between urban and natural landscapes, between industrialisation and ‘nature’ in order to make apprentices fit for Western industrialised societies. The images and their contents testify to a constant mix and re-mix of different learning environments intended to educate the natural, urban, mobile, and communal future worker in order to achieve societal harmony – also by including pre-industrial spaces and open-air activities as liminal spaces for experimentation that were set apart from the profane while mitigating the risks of industrialisation. [less ▲]

Learning How to See and Feel: Alfred Lichtwark and His Concept of Artistic and Aesthetic Education

in Paedagogica Historica (2017)